• Scott L Zuckerman, Akshitkumar M Mistry, Rimal Hanif, Lola B Chambless, Joseph S Neimat, John C Wellons, J Mocco, Allen K Sills, Matthew J McGirt, and Reid C Thompson.
• Department of Neurological Surgery, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Electronic address: scott.zuckerman@vanderbilt.edu.
• World Neurosurg. 2016 Feb 1; 86: 120-6.

ObjectiveExposure to surgical subspecialties is limited during the preclinical years of medical school. To offset this limitation, the authors created a neurosurgery elective for first- and second-year medical students. The objective was to provide each student with early exposure to neurosurgery by combining clinical experience with faculty discussions about the academic and personal realities of a career in neurosurgery.MethodsFrom 2012 to 2013, the authors offered a neurosurgery elective course to first- and second-year medical students. Each class consisted of the following: 1) peer-reviewed article analysis; 2) student presentation; 3) faculty academic lecture; 4) faculty personal lecture with question and answer period.ResultsThirty-five students were enrolled over a 2-year period. After completing the elective, students were more likely to: consider neurosurgery as a future career (P < 0.0001), perceive the personalities of attending physicians to be more collegial and friendly (P = 0.0002), perceive attending quality of life to be higher (P < 0.0001), and believe it was achievable to be a neurosurgeon and have a family (P < 0.0001). The elective did not alter students' perceived difficulty of training (P = 0.7105).ConclusionsThe neurosurgery elective course significantly increased student knowledge across several areas and changed perceptions about collegiality, quality of life, and family-work balance, while not altering the students' views about the difficulty of training. Adopting a neurosurgery elective geared towards preclinical medical students can significantly change attitudes about the field of neurosurgery and has potential to increase interest in pursuing a career in neurosurgery.Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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